Month: November 2009

Monitor Arm

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After pondering about buying one for months I finally broke down and bought an LCD monitor arm. Instead of buying one from the company that makes my desk I opted for a different model that seemed a lot better and much cheaper. Sorry Anthro, your desks may rock but I went with an Ergotron LX Desk Mount LCD Arm. I read a good review and picked one up on Amazon for $150 cheaper than I was going to pay with the solution from Anthro.

The arm was super easy to setup. Gotta love C Clamps. It took a few minutes to get the 100 x 100 VESA mount adapter on and the monitor mounted by myself but I had a bunch of practice at work so it wasn’t as bad as mounting the 19″ ones I had at work last month. Overall I am very happy with my purchase and the way the setup came out. It was well worth the money.

Monitor Arm Monitor Arm

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Sunday Migraine

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All in all it was a productive day yesterday and the crowds weren’t so bad. On the down side in the early evening after I wrote my post last night I got a sudden migraine. It was a bad one. I couldn’t even finish dinner. I ended up being able to get up for a little while a few hours later, but had to go lie down again quickly. I ended up sleeping it off and was fine this morning.

Sunday Shopping

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Today I didn’t listen to my better judgement and I went into Manhattan for some shopping. It is a big shopping weekend so I typically like to avoid the crazy crowds. I do have some stuff I need to get before my vacation so I decided to head out anyway. I first hit Macy’s to check out some luggage accessories. I need a few items before my trip. That Macy’s was a bust. I then headed over to see if my hair cut place was open for a quick cut. It was closed on Sunday.

I then headed to Paragon Sports looking for a computer bag. After much research this week I decided to look at a Timbuk2 Commute 2.0 Messanger bag a try. I really like my Tumi Messenger bag, but it is just too small to carry much more than my laptop and a few items. When traveling, or just going on day trips to the office in NJ I need to carry more stuff. The Tumi just wasn’t cutting it. My Swiss Army bag was big enough but just was too bulky and looked like a monstrous book bag. I heard good things about Timbuk2 before, and while checking out reviews I stumbled upon their site. Their messenger bags looked just as nice as the Swiss Army and Tumi ones I was checking out, and they were 1/3 the price of the Tumi ones. That is the thing with Tumi. I love my bag, and got it on sale and it was still $200. The slightly larger version of the same bag that probibly would have been perfect for me was $300. That is a lot for a bag. The Timbuk2 bag I settled on was less than $100.

So back to Paragon. They ended up having what I wanted but not in the right color. I then headed over to Tekserve who was supposed to carry the brand I was looking for. In the end they did have exactly what I wanted in the color I wanted so I picked one up. Saved me ordering online. I then hit up Best Buy since I am looking for a new monitor. That was a bust too. I then grabbed some Outback to go and headed home.

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Friday Off

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Today is a half day for my office. Since I took off Wednesday and there was a holiday on Thursday I decided to take off today and have a nice 5 day weekend. I just realized this was the longest I have had off in about a year. I didn’t do anything special today. I just hung out and relaxed. After the hectic two days at my sisters it was nice to relax.

I did go out for a bit to meet up with Danny for drinks and dinner at Stout. He was braver than me and went shopping today.

Not really sure what I am going to do this weekend. I am trying to avoid most stores but I do need some stuff so I shall see how the weekend goes.

Thanksgiving With The Family

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For the holiday I took off Wednesday and Friday so I could have a long weekend. I ended up getting a cold over the weekend so ended up taking Monday as a sick day also. That meant I was in the office for Tuesday only. Wed. morning I was off with my parents to my sisters for Thanksgiving. We left early enough in the morning (10:30 is early for me) we didn’t hit much traffic. We brought in Pizza for dinner Wed. night. It was a good day. I got to play a bit with Zach and Alexis. Morgan was out with friends most of the afternoon but saw her for dinner.

Thursday was fun. I think I had more fun playing around with Morgan and Zach before breakfast than I did all year. Zach can always put a smile on my face, and Morgan scares me with how smart she is! Dinner was fun, but I am never a fan of holiday meals. Not a huge fan of Turkey. We ate with Carrie’s fine china on several card tables in their family room. They don’t have a dinning room table and the dinning room has been converted into a downstairs play / sleep room for Alexis. For a small kid she has tons of stuff. Speaking of Alexis I did get to have nice bonding time with her Wednesday and Thursday. She generally didn’t cry and she didn’t spit up on me so we are bonding really well.

After dinner (well during desert actually) Michaels dad and I took off for the train to be back in the city at a reasonable hour. My dad gave us a ride to NJ transit. Door to door it only took us about 2 hours. For a trip to my sisters that is really good. In order to make the train I had to eat my piece of Pecan Pie fast, and I didn’t have time for seconds, or to take home left overs.

All in all except for a short period of time Thursday afternoon when I thought I was getting a headache the two days with the family was great.

Bye Netflix

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Yesterday I canceled my Netflix account. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the service. I actually loved it. I think it is a great idea, and the best option out there. I just wasn’t using it enough to justify the expense. I looked at my queue a few times in the past few months and there never really was any really interesting I wanted to watch. I had cleared out the backlog of movies I had wanted to see. The amount of movies I do want to watch I can simply download on demand using my Apple TV. I think it will be cheaper. I tried this once before and after 3 weeks I was back on Netflix. This time I am not so sure. I really haven’t used it much in the last two months, and I hadn’t used their streaming service at all in months so that wasn’t even a selling point anymore.

T-Mobile Again

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My frustration with AT&T has finally come to a head. I had another week of not really being able to use my iPhone at the office, so I finally broke down and went to the T-Mobile store. I signed up for an Even More Plus plan. I figured with no contract I had nothing to lose from trying it out. I am testing the service at home and work with an old Motorola Razr I have had since 2005. So far I am having signal issues in my apt, but I already knew that non-3g service would be spotty in my apt. Friends with T-Mobile have had problems there before.

To really test the system out I just bought a used G1 Android phone from Ebay. I will see if T-Mobile 3G is as good as their map says it is in my neighborhood. I also need to be happy with the G1’s Android OS. I am skeptical about that, but hopeful I will like it enough to give up my iphone. There is a lot of “if’s” but I am willing to give it a try since the iPhone may be nice and slick and a great all around device, but if it doesn’t work half the time I try to use it I don’t care how nice it is.

I really hope this works out. I really like the no contract concept even if the phones are more money (thanks ebay). I also like the fact that I can get unlimited voice for $50. I currently pay $59 for 900 minutes that I can’t use since the phone doesn’t work most of the places I need it to. I always liked T-Mobile. I only got rid of them when I gave up my own mobile to use the Partsearch issued one. After that I got AT&T because of phone selection and the iPhone.

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Speaking of RTM

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I last week I wrote about my current fixation with Remember The Milk (RTM). I just found a reason to like it (and other web apps) even more. I read a brief reference to a SSB (Site Specific Browser). I vaguely recall hearing about the concept before so I decided to read a bit more about it. Turned out I had used one before (Zimbra Desktop Client). The concept is pretty basic, but an interesting twist to using websites over native applications. I read up on Mozilla’s Prism, and then I found the Mac only Fluid. I have since installed both apps. I know that all these apps do is let me run a dedicated instance of a browser for a specific site. I like that it makes a site act like a dedicated program. With RTM there are even scripts to enhance the site to make it more like a real installed program.

For me I typically have at least 3 tabs open in my browser at all times. These are the sites / apps that I always use. I have my Zimbra mailbox, RTM, and Google Voice. I am experiencing a known bug with the Zimbra Desktop program so I have been using the site. Besides that issue, now with a SSB I can take two of those tabs away and make them act like stand alone programs. Thankfully I am not the first person to want to do this with RTM or Google Voice. I have installed some Greese Monkey scripts to make Google Voice look and feel like a real program on my Mac. The doc icon even throws up the number of unread SMS or Voice Mails I have. RTM’s tasks lists now look like a separate program. Both are very cool. I even have nice looking doc icons for both.

On my Mac I have decided to use Fluid. It appears to have a few more features over Prism. I am configuring Prism on my Windows 7 laptop so I can use it there also. So far I am impressed with the results, and I am thinking about what other sites I would want to give the SSB make over? Both apps Fluid and Prism are taking me one step closer to truly accessing my “stuff” from anywhere in a nicely presented way.

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